It is 2015 and your communications system is no longer some box screwed onto plywood in some back room with a bunch of phones connected to it. Today your "Unified Communications" system is voice, video, instant messaging, presence, collaboration... and so much more... all running on commodity operating systems and running across your data network and even potentially the public Internet.

Please do explore this site, watch the video below and head on over to your favorite bookseller (such as Amazon) to pick up your copy of the Seven Deadliest Unified Communications Attacks. Make sure your UC systems are as secure as possible today!

11/28/2016

Today on CyberMonday you can buy “Seven Deadliest Unified Communications Attacks” and hundreds of other ebooks and videos from O’Reilly and associated publishers at a discount of 50% off or more. Simply go to:

and start shopping. All you do is enter “CYBER16” as the promotion code when checking out. The deal expires on Tuesday, November 29, 2016 at 05:00 US Pacific Time. Do note that this sale is for ebooks and not for the print versions of the books or for print/ebook bundles.
You can also go directly to the book’s page at O’Reilly and add it to your cart using that page.

Although the book was written back in 2010, it is sadly still VERY relevant to the Voice-over-IP (VoIP) systems deployed today. I would have loved it if vendors would have made systems so much more secure that this book could be forgotten about... but the security concerns have only increased in the time since the publication. Even six years later it still offers relevant advice and suggestions about how to make sure your IP communication systems are as secure as possible.

I am a big fan of buying ebooks directly from O’Reilly because doing so gets you:

12/01/2014

Want to lean more about how to increase the security of your unified communications (UC) / voice-over-IP (VoIP) system? Today you have a great opportunity to buy "Seven Deadliest Unified Communications Attacks" and hundreds of other ebooks and videos from O'Reilly and associated publishers at a discount of 50% off or more. Simply go to:

If you have read "Seven Deadliest Unified Communications Attacks" and found the book helpful, could you please take a moment to rate and/or review the book on O'Reilly's website? Even if you just enter the number of stars and say something very basic it would be helpful. All you need to do is go to this page:

12/02/2013

Would you like to purchase the ebook of "Seven Deadliest Unified Communications Attacks" for 50% off? or maybe even 60% off? As I mentioned before, the folks at O'Reilly are now selling the ebook of 7 Deadliest UC Attacks and they have a promotion going on today:

Here's a great chance to help learn more about how to secure Unified Communications / VoIP systems - or to buy this book for someone you think would like to learn more on the subject.

The awesome aspects about ordering ebooks directly from O'Reilly include:

DRM-free - you can read the ebook on as many different devices as you want... and you don't have to mess around with silly licensing systems.

Multiple formats - you can download the book in ePub, Kindle, PDF.

Free lifetime access - you don't have a limit on when you can download the book and you can always go back in and get it.

Free updates - whenever there are updates to a book you get a notification and can easily download the update.

All around it's just a great system for working with ebooks... and yes, I'm an author for them so you might expect me to say this, but I'm also a consumer who purchases ebooks and I like their system better than any of the other ones out there that I've tried.

I'll note on the "Free updates" part - I don't yet have any current plans to update "Seven Deadliest UC Attacks" (unlike my "Migrating Applications to IPv6" book that will see an update in 2014) but if I do work on an update at some future point, ebook purchasers through O'Reilly would be the ones to easily get an update (versus print or ebook through other systems). And you will get updates for any other ebooks you purchase.

It's a great deal - and I'd encourage you to stock up on ebooks from O'Reilly's site today!

P.S. To comply with full disclosure requirements: the links in this post are affiliate links - I will make a tiny amount of money if you purchase any ebooks after following these links... but that's not why I'm writing this post.

11/02/2012

Do you have an account on Goodreads? If so, there is a page for Seven Deadliest Unified Communications Attacks with a very kind review from Alan Johnston. As an author, I'd naturally like to have some more reviews as they do tend to help people understand what people think about the book.

If you found the book helpful, could you please take a moment to review (or at least "star") the book there?

Even if you don't want to post a review right now, if you are on Goodreads and can add the book to a "shelf" that would also be helpful, as others will then see that people are reading the book.

Thanks again for the continued support and for the positive comments I continue to receive about the book. I'm very pleased that people have found it helpful and that we can continue to have a healthy dialog about communications security issues.

The SC article focuses on the "Fishbowl" phones designed by the NSA and includes a number of interesting comments on the state of security implementations provided by vendors. It mentions that the NSA was looking to use SSL VPNs but due to a lack of interoperability wound up using IPSEC instead. Similarly they were looking to use DTLS-SRTP, but didn't find the implementations and so instead used "descriptions". The article has this excellent statement by Salter (my emphasis added):

Salter said the security specifications, such as those sought for the voice application, would be useful to everyone.

“We need to send a message [about] standards, interoperability and plug and play," she said.

This need for interoperability and standards support was certainly one of the themes I tried to bring out in the book. It is indeed critical for the long term success of securing unified communications systems.

While there certainly is value in having multiple layers of security, I do wonder what this means in terms of computational overhead and/or latency. As our mobile phones have become more powerful, perhaps this is no longer a major concern.

Separate from the article, I was intrigued to read over on the NSA Mobility Program page that the first document they are releasing is the "Enterprise Mobility Architecture for Secure Voice over Internet Protocol (SVoIP)". From the page:

The first Mobility Capability document to be released is the initial draft release of the Enterprise Mobility Architecture for Secure Voice over Internet Protocol (SVoIP). It is intended to be a living reference that will be updated to keep pace with technology and policies as they change over time, as additional security products and services are developed, and as lessons learned from early adopters of this architecture are applied. As a first step, this version contains guidance on the required procedures necessary to build and implement a SVoIP capability using commercial grade cellular mobile devices. Future releases will build on this architecture and will include mobile device management and data applications; and ultimately integrate the WIFI service with an expanded list of end devices.

The 100+ page PDF file looks to be a fairly comprehensive view into what is involved with rolling out a secure mobile communications solution. It's great to see this from the NSA and it is a great contribution to the ongoing efforts to secure VoIP communications.

12/07/2011

Does anyone really give a (insert favorite profanity) about VoIP security? That was the key question I asked in the presentation I have to the recent 2011 ITT Real-Time Communications Conference. Technically, my talk with titled "The State of VoIP Security", but I decided to have a little bit of fun with it.

It was an enjoyable session and I recorded a video that I hope that I can make the cycles to produce and upload sometime soon.

There's a great schedule of speakers and I'm looking forward to both giving my session and also listening to the security presentations that follow mine. If you are going to be at the event, please do say hello!

While not directly related to Unified Communications, the reality is that many UC web interfaces, particularly for mobile devices, may turn to HTML5 as a way to create a web interface that provides an excellent user interface and works across all mobile devices.

Perhaps more importantly, the work of the RTCWEB/WebRTC working groups within the IETF and W3C, which I've written about over on Voxeo's blogs, is aimed at bringing the "real-time communications" functionality directly into the web browser. In other words, you wouldn't need a browser plugin or additional program on your computer to make voice, video or chat connections… it could happen entirely within the browser.

At that point every browser potentially can become a UC endpoint… and therefore a concern for communications security.

It's a lengthy document from ENISA, but worth a read as it dives into both analysis and recommendations for greater HTML5 security.